selling stuff--a bug? (BG1)

[mrxian]

recently, i decided that it was time for me to once again play through the entire BG saga. so, grabbing my BG1 discs, blowing the dust off, i installed the game (full install this time, and i have to say it is a lot better).
i created a cleric, who i plan to sub to a wizard sometime in SoA.
now, after a while of playing, i decided it was time to go ahead and earn some additional levels before trying Durlags tower. where did i decide to do this? well, after much carefull consideration, the cave where the wyverns live was my place of leveling. why? 1400xp per easy kill, a wyvern head to boot, and the possibility to go outside and rest undisrupted.
so i started killing wyverns.
chromatic orb and two rings of wizardry made this all too easy, so after about 10 wyverns, i decided that if wyverns where this easy, durlags tower could never pose a real threat.
so i went to sell my wyvern heads, and after a bit of searching for a shop, i came to the sorcerous sundries, and indeed they bought my wyvern heads.
minsc carried 4 heads, and the nice man at the sundries payed me 400 gp for each of them (i sold them in one batch, of course).
now, kivan had six more heads, but when i tried to sell them, he only offered me 200 gp for each, so i thought to myself, this is wrong. so i gave all the heads to minsc and tried to sell them again. again only 200 gp. reloading my game, i discovered that if i sold all my heads in one batch, he would give me 200 gp/head, but selling them in multiple batches earned me 400/head for the first batch, and 200 for the others.
after a bit of research, i discovered that this system works for almost all items, if a shop allready has some of it in stock, he will offer far less for them than when he has none in stock. so carefull planning (and perhaps some buying) before selling loot could net you quite a lot of cash.

i don't know if this is true for SoA or ToB as well, but i think it could be.

[Grojlach]

No, there are some items that will become less valuable once you're offering larger and more quantities of it. Same goes for Yeti and Winter Wolf pelts in Icewind Dale, for example. A simple matter of supply and demand, I suppose.

[ 02-06-2003, 08:27 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Annatar]

I think this belongs in the BG I forum... not SoA, but it does have the same system of shopkeepers and selling multiple items to a shopkeeper... it is well-know in the SoA world

{edit} because try to sell like 10 short swords in the adventure mart, the first 10 he buys at let me say 50 gp, over 10 he will buy them from you for 30 gp.... it is all about quantities

[ 02-06-2003, 08:31 AM: Message edited by: Annatar ]

[Kaltia]

The BG1 forum is here.

[Radek]

The prices: it's a common behaviour of all shops in SoA. You have already found the principle: if the shop does not have any copy of a certain item then it pays higher price for the item. If the shop already has a copy of the item then it pays less. Therefore, if you have items new to a particular shop then sell all of them in a single batch. You will be paid the better price for each item in the batch. Later on, it does not matter how you will sell the same items to the shop. You will be paid the worse price no matter whether you sell the items one by one or all of them together. It's not a bug in the game.

But there seems to be a bug in the prices in SoA. It concerns identified and unidentified items. As we know, shops are offering only 1 gp for an unidentified item or for a dicharged item. But sometimes, you will be offered only 1 gp for an identified and charged valuable item. For example, the Arbane's Sword. IIRC, you should be offered about 3000 gp for it. You will usually be offered this amount of gp but sometimes, the shopkeep insists on 1 gp even if the sword is identified and fully charged. Why? I don't know.

[Aurum]

Nope, it's vary per charism, reputation, quantity and the product in itself?, so is my play.

[Buster_Wiz]

go sell those wyvern heads to the guard captain seekings scalps in Beregost. You will be pleasantly suprised hehe.

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Aurum: Nope, it's vary per charism, reputation, quantity and the product in itself?, so is my play.

When BUYING things, yes.
But this thread is talking about SELLING things. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[pcgiant]

Originally posted by Radek: But there seems to be a bug in the prices in SoA. It concerns identified and unidentified items. As we know, shops are offering only 1 gp for an unidentified item or for a dicharged item. But sometimes, you will be offered only 1 gp for an identified and charged valuable item. For example, the Arbane's Sword. IIRC, you should be offered about 3000 gp for it. You will usually be offered this amount of gp but sometimes, the shopkeep insists on 1 gp even if the sword is identified and fully charged. Why? I don't know.

You have to rest before it regains it's abilities, after all, the merchant doesn't know it casts haste unless he has a try for himself.

[Radek]

Naturally. But in my experience, even a long delay (several days) before attemting to sell such item does not help. Arbane's Sword? Identified? Fully charged by not using it for more than two days? Okay, 1 gp. As if the sword weren't identified or as if the sword were discharged completely.
This can happen not only when you try to sell Arbane's Sword. Other valuable items may suffer from the bug as well. On the other hand, it does not happen every run through the game.
Note: I am playing a plain vanilla SoA without any mods (except the XP cap remover) and without any patches.